2. Huh! Using the dead ships as turrets for invasions is actually fascinating.

3. Thanks to Watashiwa, we actually have an awesome reason for how the ship stuff works:

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As for why the Hydral doesn't die when the pods do, it's because the Hydral isn't there. Since the Hydral is WAY TOO BIG to fit in a normal sized ship, it pilots the pods remotely. It does so like it's actually there by cloning its own brain to make a biocomputer, then going into sensory deprivation. The biocomputer acts like an extra head, so the Hydral feels like it's there in the pod. Suffice it to say, venturing out knowing that you aren't sure if you'll be the brain in the box that dies, or the one that stays back at the ship and lives, is really cool.

4. With Rogue Legacy I agree that the lack of item pickups during the runs was super frustrating. I liked the fact that you lost all those coins when re-entering the castle, though, because I felt like that was the only thing keeping tension during runs. Worked well for me, anyhow. You could actually get it up to only losing half your coins on death via that one ability (it went in increments of 10%).

5. Overall we want to try to avoid ANY menus whatsoever in the game, other than the main menu, escape menu, and settings menu. So no menus whatsoever for any sort of in-game stuff. We may not succeed in that, but there are a variety of games in this sort of genre that have. The Zelda-1-style ships work fine for doing purchases, for instance. And there are plenty of familiar ways for swapping out items and choosing which to keep by just re-swapping them. Anyway, I think that lots of complexity can demonstrably be had in these sorts of games without having to get into equipping/purchasing/upgrading/crafting menus. Those always tend to make me yawn in any game; at best I tolerate them, at worst I actively hate them. But a lot of games have managed to have satisfying complexity minus those.

6. BD is really a bit of a different beast from what I'm going for here, because it has a strategy layer on top of the roguelike layer. This is meant to be a single-layered thing with no strategy layer (though there's plenty of that sort of thinking in roguelike games in general). The persistence layer is more a matter of an inter-run progression.

7. Torchlight is another really different beast, because that's one where you're playing more of an RPG in some respects. I mean, in general with dungeon crawlers it's about character progression and so losing your stuff would be horrible. This game is meant to be more about your own skill gains and finding lots of crazy different scenarios in terms of items/enemies/weapons/etc on different runs. The crazy stacking of items and weapons that you get is part of the fun, and that gets tossed out the window if you wind up being able to keep those between runs. Instead dealing with what you find and using new tactics because of that is something I like.

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6. BD is really a bit of a different beast from what I'm going for here, because it has a strategy layer on top of the roguelike layer. This is meant to be a single-layered thing with no strategy layer (though there's plenty of that sort of thinking in roguelike games in general). The persistence layer is more a matter of an inter-run progression.

I said "comes closest" - I never actually said it "came close". Torchlight was offered as an example of a game where I felt like the "post-mission-loss resurrection" was handled well.

6. BD is really a bit of a different beast from what I'm going for here, because it has a strategy layer on top of the roguelike layer. This is meant to be a single-layered thing with no strategy layer (though there's plenty of that sort of thinking in roguelike games in general). The persistence layer is more a matter of an inter-run progression.

I said "comes closest" - I never actually said it "came close". Torchlight was offered as an example of a game where I felt like the "post-mission-loss resurrection" was handled well.

Fair enough! It's definitely all relative, heh.

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It's a different craft each time. They're unmanned drones cobbled together from what little scrap and random junk you can spare from what's just laying around your cruiser waiting to be used as part of the repair effort, held together by string and duct tape and a lot of prayer. As such, they are basically guaranteed to last just long enough to get the job done, and then thoroughly fall apart as they re-enter the launch bay, with several important components burnt out as a bonus.

So, a new mission requires building a new drone.

...Maybe tie it into the loot system. Parts you find in the 'dungeons' can be used to outfit your drone for the next run, and the better you play - the faster you finish, the less damage you take - the likelier it is that some of the parts you stuck in the ship will NOT be fried when you're done, so you can reuse them for the next run. Might work best if the game's RNG is reluctant to hand you types of parts you already have (no plasma cutter if you've already got one sitting in inventory, for example), so the players can't just use one equipment setup over and over and over again, but have to keep mixing it up and using whatever parts they have on hand to counteract the attrition of things just sometimes breaking no matter how well they play.

UNRELATED EDIT BUT SOMETHING I WANT TO SAY ANYWAY: I'd like it if the controls were kept simple enough that the game is playable on a controller; I don't like using the mouse for aiming in shmups, accuracy be damned.

ANOTHER UNRELATED EDIT: Now that I think about it, the plans for The Game Formerly Known As Life At The End Of The Universe remind me more than a little of an indie game in early access that I stumbled across the other day, called Cryptark. I've got no idea how close they'll be in execution, but it might be something to keep in mind.

PROBABLY FINAL EDIT: Oh, duh, I'm a moron. I learned about Cryptark from Arcen's twitter feed. Oh well, maybe some people on the forum didn't already know about it.